


Deeper Wounds

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Extended Scene, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles' wound during the Trenton campaign causes Bass to take a leap of faith.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deeper Wounds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [impsy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/impsy/gifts).



> Why, yes, there are scenes/quotes directly from episode 10 ("Nobody's Fault But Mine") here. I presume, my dear recipient, you've seen it. For anyone else: spoiler alert!

_Trenton Campaign - Five years after the blackout_

Crouched behind those boulders, even with bullets flying everywhere (those soon-to-be-scarce bullets that Bass had just been joking about), ricocheting off uncomfortably close to their heads, Bass could feel the rush coursing through his veins. It wasn’t the adrenaline rush he had gotten from the combat, not this. This was a far more familiar rush, an intrinsic, archaic high - the high of being in the company of Miles Matheson.

Miles winced, and Bass let his gaze travel down his torso, only to see his fingers coated in crimson.

“Bass, you gotta go!”

“Forget it,” Bass protested, instinctively. Who the hell did this man think he was to say such a thing to him and at such a time?

“Look at me,” Miles’ voice was weakening, but he held Monroe’s gaze steadily with his own. “Someone’s gotta lead the men.”

“I don’t care about the men.” It was true - why hide it? There was only one reason Sebastian Monroe had found himself in this position, about to be completely riddled with bullets, and it wasn’t some proverbial “men.”

Weakly, sounding almost exhausted, Miles uttered, “Don’t argue with me...”

“All the years,” Bass commenced in a trembling voice, unable to hide the emotion in it, “All the times I was in trouble, you never left my side. You never ran. If you’re dying, I’m dying with you.”

“Idiot,” Miles hissed, but it didn’t matter anymore, Bass had made up his mind. He had wrapped his arms around Miles, under his armpits, and began to pull, when they were both rocked by shocks of an explosion. Someone had apparently kissed one of their last grenades farewell. 

Bass thought this was a good time as any to let the men go to Hell, and he shook off the ringing in his ears and turned towards Miles again.

“Miles... MILES!” This time his best friend had been unconscious. “Fuck, Miles, don’t do this to me!”

“Monroe, what the hell?” Bass looked up to find Jeremy Baker, his dusty blond hair practically glowing like a halo in the afternoon sun.

“Help me get him out of here, Baker! C’mon.”

Thank God for the Midwest and their houses with deeply dug out basements, Bass thought as they had managed to drag Miles’ unconscious form into the first abandoned residence they could find out of the range of bullets. Blood was slowly continuing to ooze out of Miles’ abdomen, causing Bass’ heart to race. This was the blood he would have given his life to never see spilled. 

“Baker, go see if you can find something to use as a bandage,” Monroe ordered, his fingers mechanically unbuttoning Miles’ shirt, praying it was a through and through.

The basement was dark, but he could smell the blood, could feel it, slippery and metallic, all over his own fingers. “Come on, Miles, don’t leave me, man.” Bass wiped the sweat forming on his forehead with the back of his hand and looked around the room for something to use for a light source. He wished he was a cat, or at least had better night vision. And where the hell was Baker? How hard was it to find some fucking bandages? “I have to stop the bleeding,” Bass mumbled to no one in particular, applying his hand to the source of the bleeding, pressing down as hard as he could. “Miles, you asshole, don’t leave me.”

The man beneath him stirred and emitted a little moan.

“Miles?”

Something between a groan and murmur was his response, but it was enough to let Bass know that Miles was no longer unconscious.

“Where are we?” Miles’ voice was hoarse and hollow at the same time.

“A basement in some house,” Bass replied.

“The hell, Bass... we’re sitting ducks here.... get out.”

“Again with the trying to send me away?”

“It’s not a joke, Bass.”

“I have no intention of joking. Miles.”

At last, footsteps on the staircase announced Baker’s return, his triumphant return judging by the spring in his step. Bass turned around expectantly, his hand still pressing into the open wound.

“Well?”

“I couldn’t find any bandages, but I found some sheets in the linen closet that I think we’ll be able to use. Here.” Baker shoved something soft and crisp into Monroe’s hands. “I tore them up into strips.”

Bass’ hands shook as he dressed the wound. Not a through and through after all. They would need a surgeon. Where the hell are they going to find a surgeon? The closest man their company had to a medic was located at least two miles away (a distance which, in the past, would have made him laugh, but now made him want to beat his head against the cold ground upon which Miles was lying, in a pool of his own blood).

“I’ll go.”

“You will?” Bass felt his heart lift. At least he wouldn’t have to leave Miles. Not yet. 

Baker nodded, his face taking on a serious expression. “Of course, I’ll go. I owe him my life, Bass, just as I owe you my life.”

“I’ll try to hold position here as long as I can,” Bass said, clasping Baker’s hand with both of his, heedless of the fact that they had still been coated in blood. “Please hurry, Jeremy.”

Bass had dragged Miles onto a rug which he found rolled up in the corner of the dark room. Eventually he was able to grope his way in the darkness towards something he reasonably took for a candle, and he lit it from his flint, which he had begun to carry at all times a couple of years back when the matches had started to become sodden or moisten as if in personal insult to his abortive attempts. 

Holding the candle above his head, Bass was finally able to make out Miles’ face in the darkness. He seemed even more pale now, the shadows of his face playing a game of hide and seek as the candle flickered in Monroe’s hand. Bass knew he had lost too much blood. He also knew that if the bullet or the shrapnel wasn’t removed, there was a good chance he’d go into sepsis. They didn’t have a lot of time. He prayed silently that Baker’s feet would grow wings.

“I’m cold,” Miles whispered, and Bass sat down on the floor next to him, putting his hand against his friend’s perspiring forehead. He was probably starting to run a fever.

“You feel pretty warm, Miles. Do you want me to give you my jacket?” How about my life? Bass would give anything, do anything, just to make sure he wasn’t going to lose him. Not Miles. Not after everything and everyone else he’s already lost. “Miles?” The man on the floor appeared to be slipping away. Bass stripped off his jacket and his own shirt and draped them over his friend. Then, after giving it a moment’s contemplation, he lay down on the floor and wrapped his arms around the other man.

“Mmm?” Miles mumbled.

“Skin on skin. I read it’s supposed to help with the healing process, or something,” Bass muttered into the back of Miles’ neck.

“That’s for newborns, Bass,” Miles said weakly, but Bass could hear the smile in it. He could always tell when he had made Miles smile.

“Just don’t want you to be cold.”

For a few moments, all was silent, the air punctuated only with the sounds of Miles’ halting breath and Bass’ own pounding pulse.

“Thank you,” Miles whispered.

Bass closed his eyes and pressed his face into the groove between Miles’ shoulderblades. Things felt peaceful there. He could allow his mind to wander. As if by some default function, it reset his thoughts to that same memory, over and over again: the cold earth, the hard bottle against his lips, the bitter taste of beer, the bitterness of his own tears, the four small, evenly spaced mounds before him. The gun in his hand.

“I got nothing left,” Bass had said then, and Miles had replied, “Well, you got me.” And Bass laughed, because he had no idea, that idiot Matheson, of exactly how _badly_ Bass had wished that were true, and for how long he wanted to hear Miles say that. You got me. I’m yours. And you’re mine. 

“I mean, what the hell would I be without you. Been brothers our whole lives, since we were kids.”

Yes, brothers, they had been that. And more, so much more, if only in Bass’ own hidden thoughts, buried just as deeply as his parents and his sisters under those evenly spaced piles of earth.

“Bass, give me the gun, before you do something stupid.”

And Bass obeyed, just as he always did. He would have given Miles anything he had asked for, only Miles never asked him for anything that he would not have willingly parted with himself. And that was the night that Miles had saved his life with nothing but steadfast friendship and a few well-chosen words. Miles had ever been a man of few words.

“Bass... if I die...” Miles’ voice brought Bass back from his reverie.

“No.” Bass wrapped his arms tighter around the other man’s torso, careful not to aggravate the wound.

“Bass...”

“You don’t understand, Miles. You dying is not an option. You’re the last one I’ve got left. The only thing I’ve got in this world that’s worth living for.” Miles was silent. Bass wished he would say something, something preferably analogous to what had just come out of his own mouth, but on the other hand, at least he was no longer speaking of dying. Stupid Miles. Stupid Death. “I know it’s not the same for you. You got your brother and his kids... And you know... women.”

“Bass, what are you talking about?”

“Women, apparently.” The truth was, Bass wasn’t really sure.

“Sebastian...”

“Oh, well, it’s _Sebastian_ now, is it? I guess now I’m in trouble, Daddy.”

He was trying to cover it up now, to laugh it off the way he always did. _You got me._ The way that his name had rolled of Miles’ tongue sent shivers up Monroe’s spine.

“Just... don’t leave me, Miles. I don’t know what I would do if you were ever gone. You’re the only thing in this world that keeps me sane. That keeps me good.”

Miles turned towards him slowly. It was obvious the wound was causing him a great deal of pain, but he schooled his facial muscles into a stoic mask. It was a look Bass was very accustomed to seeing. In the slight, flickering light of the candle, Miles’ eyes glowed like hot embers, dark-brown pools in which Bass wanted so badly to drown.

“You’re good, Bass.”

“How do you know that?” Monroe tried to smile, but his lip quivered instead.

“Because I love you.”

“I love you too... man.” Bass wanted to bite his own tongue for adding that last qualifier. What did he have to lose now, except Miles, and Miles was already, damn him to Hell, slipping away from him. Slipping impossibly far away where Bass knew he would immediately follow because anything to the contrary was unthinkable. “I love you too. Miles.”

Miles’ hand moved slowly up Monroe’s exposed arm, fingers gently brushing against his neck, cupping the side of his face. He looked so tired, his Miles, and yet, something in his eyes sparkled with curious, almost boyish intent.

“Tell me you haven’t been waiting twenty years to tell me that,” Miles whispered.

“I was kind of hoping I wouldn’t need to tell you,” Bass replied and pressed his forehead to Miles’. He was starting to burn up. Perhaps this curious discussion was only the result of the rising fever, Bass thought. Perhaps, he wouldn’t remember tomorrow. If he lives. And then Bass leaned closer and pressed his lips against the lips of his best friend.

Bass thought his heart would do the ridiculously cliché thing and jump out of his chest, but then he felt Miles’ hand move to the back of his head and clench tightly in his short blond curls. And then Miles pressed him closer and opened his lips underneath Bass’ tentatively inquiring lips, his tongue asking silent permission for entry, permission which Miles was apparently granting him, melting into a slow kiss. Bass heard himself groan, as if his soul was escaping his body, to mingle briefly with Miles and his all-encompassing essence. Nothing has ever felt as right before, nothing even came close. 

“I will make you well again,” Bass began to whisper, his breath hot against Miles’ own burning skin. “I will keep you safe. And you will live, for me, and be with me. And it will be the two of us, Miles, like always, just you and I.” He showered soft kisses along Miles’s jaw, his neck, the taut skin over his clavicles. “And the world can burn, Miles, I don’t give a shit about any of them. Only don’t ever leave me. Stay.”

It was true: Bass didn’t give a damn about the world. Especially now, that those damn Trenton rebels have hurt Miles. He would destroy them.

“I won’t,” Miles promised, and Bass could tell that at that moment, as Miles pulled him closer again, and kissed his face, and bit his lower lip gently, that he had meant it.

 

_Philadelphia, power plant - fifteen years after the blackout_

Bass could feel his eyes burning with unshed tears as he held Miles in his crosshairs, Miles’ own rifle aimed straight at his chest.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, Miles. Put your gun down.” He had lowered his own weapon, as a sign of good faith.

“What are you doing?” Bass could hear the trembling in Miles’ vocal cords, but his hands were steady on the rifle, his Marine training ingrained upon his psyche just as indelibly as Bass’ own love was carved in his heart.

“I’m not gonna shoot you. I want you to come back.”

“You want me to _what_?” The sheer disgust in Miles’ voice felt like a slap against Monroe’s face, but he allowed it to roll off him.

“We look out for each other - that’s what we do.” Bass had lowered his gun completely and began to inch closer. “Even when the other one screws up. I forgive you, okay, _I forgive you._ ” Couldn’t he see? If Bass could forgive his betrayal, his attempted _murder_ then surely nothing could stand between them. “I’ll let your family live. I’ll give you _whatever_ you want.” Anything, Miles, please, my life, my body, my love, all the power in the world. Only come back to me. “It was better, it was simpler with you here. Please.” Bass threw down his gun. “You tried to kill me once before and you couldn’t pull the trigger. I understand that now - I couldn’t do it either if I were you. And I don’t think you can pull it now.”

Miles’ own eyes seemed to be holding back tears. “I’m sorry.” At last, Miles lowered his rifle, and something inside Bass seemed to flood with joy.

“It’s okay,” Bass said, relief, love and agony evident in his expression. He took another step forward, his arms aching to wrap around Miles again, to make everything right, to make the world make sense once more.

“No, I mean I’m sorry I didn’t kill you the first time." Bass halted at these words, his eyes desperately querying Miles' expression for any sign that he had been joking. But Miles continued, "You’re not the same person. You’re too far gone. I see it now. We are not family. Not anymore. I have a family. You – are nothing to me.”

It felt like a stab to the lungs. The sound that escaped Bass’ throat was akin to a wounded animal about to strike, and strike he did, his hands grasping the barrel of the rifle. Miles’ fingers pressing on the trigger, causing the shots to fire, and then, before he had a chance to master his feelings, there they were - their swords drawn, in heated hand-to-hand combat. _If I can’t have you, no one can._

“Kill him!” Bass ordered, as Baker and the rest of the back-up rushed into the room, shutting his eyes against his own words, and prayed a completely different prayer, as the bullets rained down all around him, hitting walls, hitting pipes, hitting everything but Miles. Bass opened his eyes in time to see Miles leap, like some kind of a wild cheetah, out of the elevated window.

 _Run_ , Bass thought. Run, Miles, so that one day you can run back to me again.


End file.
